Self Medication: And Then There's Angela
by AdmHawthorne
Summary: What happened with Angela after Jane & Maura declared their feelings for each other? Set within in the "Self Medication" universe and cowritten with Googlemouth. One shot.


**One shot written with Googlemouth.**

**Characters aren't ours. They belong to TNT, Tess, Janet, and the rest of those important type people.**

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><p>It wasn't so much that she wanted to know every detail of Maura's personal life so much as she thought of the medical examiner as another daughter, and she wanted her to be happy. The amount of time she was spending with Jane was appreciated. She wanted them to have fun together as best friends should, but she often wondered when Maura had time to do things like date. After all, she <em>deserved<em> to have the chance to do things that made her happy, too.

It was clear she and Jane had been going through a rough patch in their friendship despite the fact that Jane seemed to be spending a lot of time at Maura's house when Maura wasn't out all night elsewhere. Lately, things seemed to be getting better, but there was still a weird tension between them, and, as the resident mother figure, Angela was starting to become increasingly concerned that her daughter and her adopted daughter were about to be completely on the outs with each other.

The fact they had come home, Maura had gone straight to her bedroom, and Jane had all but ignored her mother as she followed her best friend into the master suite was actually a relief to the elder Rizzoli. It meant they were, at the very least, not fighting in front of her anymore. She had planned to stop Jane and talk to her before the lanky brunette could escape to the guestroom or Maura's bedroom, but one look from her daughter as she breezed by told her now was not the best time. In fact, Angela was fairly certain Maura had not even noticed her, and the hurry they both seemed to be in was puzzling at best and troublesome in its own right at worst.

Were they going into the bedroom so they could fight without her seeing it? Was something wrong with one of them, and they didn't want her to know? Was Jane's therapy session particularly hard this time?

She knew about the therapy sessions. She knew about all of it, but she had trusted Maura to do what she could not – steer Jane to safer waters. She had tried to help her daughter, but had hit roadblock after roadblock, and, after dealing with Tommy's addiction problems, she decided that pushing her daughter when she wasn't ready would just make things worse.

Angela thought over the past several months as she began to prep the kitchen for dinner.

Things seemed to be settling back down. She hadn't smelled or seen the telltale signs of drinking on her daughter in a long time. She was healthier, happier, and she seemed to be working toward being okay again.

With a relieved smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, Angela carefully set the pot of water on the stove and turned the burner on. Everything was going to be fine.

"Oh god."

It was a faint sound, almost too faint to hear, but Angela's head shot up. The rasp in the words left little doubt she had just heard her daughter.

"Maura…"

The name was strangled, somewhere between a groan and a moan, and the sounds were getting louder by the minute, echoing down the hallway.

"Oh, shit, right there!"

Angela's eyes bulged for a moment, eyebrows rising in shock. Was she hearing what she thought she was hearing? Surely not. She carefully made her way down the hall, quietly walking toward the closed door to the master bedroom.

A primal moan ripped through the sudden quiet of the house. There was no doubt at all it had come hurtling out of the mouth of her daughter. Angela stopped dead in her tracks, leaning against the hallway wall beside the bedroom door.

"_Oh my God," she whispered to herself. "My Janie… and Maura?"_

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><p>Saturday morning rolled around, and the Rizzoli matriarch ventured into the main house, the smell of breakfast already permeating the air. "Good morning, Angela." Maura greeted her with a smile. "Care for some crepes? I'm filling them with a sweet cheese blend and topping with berries. There's also some apple-smoked andouille sausage."<p>

Rather than being dressed already, as was her usual habit, the caramel-haired woman wore a saffron orange silk nightgown beneath a cream robe embroidered in more saffron orange and matching slippers. Though her hair was nice, it wasn't what the upscale doctor normally considered done. It was simply brushed to a gloss and left loose, and she wore no makeup whatsoever.

As Angela silently reached in the cabinet for a mug, Maura noted with a very pleasant calmness, "Oh, good, you found the coffee. I also have fruit juice, milk, and I can put on some hot water for tea if you like. Jane should be out in a few minutes, at most. The shower stopped just before you came in."

Pouring herself a cup of coffee and then quietly sitting down at the kitchen's island, Angela watched the doctor for a moment. Drinking the hot liquid gave her time to clear her mind of the fog from the previous night. She had been trying to make a plan to figure out the best way to address what she'd clearly heard the night before, but the scenarios that came to mind all ended with Jane storming out of the room and never speaking to her again.

She had, however, never considered approaching Maura alone.

She shrugged. This was as good a time as any.

"I'd love some crepes, thank you, Maura," she started by way of easing into the conversation. "I've got to say, I'm surprised you're up so early considering how late you were up last night!" She mildly sipped at her coffee, eyes watching the other woman with a steady gaze Jane must have learned from her mother.

The smaller woman dimpled as she lifted a perfect crepe from the flat pan, set it on the plate, and poured another. While smoothing it out to cook evenly, she attempted to smooth out her dimples as well, not wanting to smile too brightly. Her attempt was largely unsuccessful, and knowing it made her appear almost bashful. "You know, normally I'd have stayed in bed, and I might go back after breakfast, but right now I am just ravenous."

Once the new crepe was spread out and cooking merrily, she turned to the plate where three more already rested and began assembling them.

"Considering what you were up to all night, I'm surprised you want to eat anything else," Angela muttered from behind her coffee cup.

"Ma!" Jane's voice echoed through the room, piercing the supposed ease between the other two women. "What did you just say?"

Angela raised an eyebrow as she turned toward her daughter, who was dressed in a short, terry cloth bathrobe, hair wet and trailing down her back. "I said I'm sure both you and Maura are hungry. You were up so late last night and…"

"You never left the kitchen, did you?" Jane sighed heavily as she walked to the coffee pot, not bothering to watch her mother for a reaction.

"Of course I did," Angela finished her coffee, "Right after I took the water off the stove and right before you screamed loud enough to wake the dead." She set the mug down on the counter, keeping her hands wrapped around it. "You know, I didn't realize how much sound echoes in the hallway by your bedroom, Maura."

"I told you…" Jane muttered as she turned to watch the conversation between the doctor and her mother play out.

Laughter bubbled up from Maura as she listened, flipping one crepe and pouring another onto the second pan. "And I didn't realize that the hallway outside my bedroom was on the direct route from the kitchen to the guest house. We've all learned something, apparently," she said with a bright smile. "Some more than others." A sly wink slid towards the woman who had probably learned more than anyone else in the household within the past twenty-four hours .

"Sweetheart, would you prefer blueberries, strawberries, or both?" Once both crepes-in-progress were at a stage at which she could leave them, she removed two sausage links from the pan to put on Angela's plate. "Oh, and don't use the cream. I bought you that soy creamer you like. It should be right there in the refrigerator door."

"Strawberries. You know I don't eat blueberries; they stain your teeth." Obediently, Jane reached into the fridge to retrieve the soy creamer. "Ma, is that all you're going to say?" She poured in a hefty amount of the white liquid as she waited.

Angela took a bite of sausage as she considered her daughter. "You could have just told me. It's not like I don't already like Maura…"

Maura got a little misty-eyed, though she did not break her stride, pouring one crepe and flipping the other. "Aww. Thank you, Angela. I like you, too."

Angela nodded, continuing on, "And it'd have been a lot better than hearing my daughter in…"

"No, Ma," Jane shook her head in the negative, one hand holding the coffee mug, the other quickly putting down the creamer.

"…the throes…"

"Don't say it. I mean it," Jane held the now empty hand up as if doing so would stop her mother.

"…of passion." Angela smirked, her eyes twinkling. That look definitely was a family trait.

"Ew." The younger Rizzoli gave a shiver. "You had to say it. Man," she gave a little stomp of her foot, "I should have kept," the sentence kept rolling from her lips despite the sudden realization and embarrassment that showed in both her voice and face, "my mouth… shut."

"I understand gags work pretty well, too."

"MA!"

Blithely, Maura continued her breakfast preparations. Slowly she was starting to get that look – the smugness that a woman can't stop herself fully from expressing once she's had a lovely night and ensured someone else the same. "I don't use gags. I like to hear every word. Or non-word. Here you go, Jane, crepes with strawberries only, and sausage. I gave you extra sausage, because you probably need the protein."

"God," Jane muttered, taking the plate. "Okay, this is just… I can't even… I mean… Really?" She set the plate down on the island across from her mother, mug next to it. "Does this mean you're okay with all of this?"

"If I wasn't, I'd have come in there with a water hose," Angela answered around a mouthful of sausage.

Jane choked on her crepe.

"See, Jane?" Maura said as she flipped the last crepe and turned off the burner beneath the pan. "I told you Angela would be fine. She wants you to be happy. That's why she stayed out in the hallway long enough to hear you get all the way into the screaming phase."

In a few moments, her food was ready to plate. "By the way, Angela, apparently that runs in your family. Jane mentioned, at one point, the effects of having spent her childhood in the room that shared a wall with yours."

And as she sat down to eat her own breakfast, she put the cherry right on top of the whole situation. "So, did you stay long enough to hear her make me scream, too?"

"I couldn't get away from it," came the very calm reply from the other woman. "Your voice is pretty piercing at certain pitches." She shrugged. "I went back to the guest house, and I could _still_ hear you two. I'd say it's time to invest in some better insulation."

Unfazed, Maura merely nodded, enjoying her bite of stuffed crepe.

"I'm just going to crawl under the island now. Come get me when Ma's gone, and it's time to go back to work," Jane muttered, face turning bright red.

Catching Angela's eye, Maura started to smile knowingly. "Now you're just teasing Jane. I happen to know that I'm not much of a screamer. I get quieter and quieter, the more I'm enjoying myself, to the point that I entirely forget that my partner might need feedback. I'd be surprised if Jane heard me, and she was right there. Nice try, though."

"A mother's got to her have her fun somehow," Angela shrugged, standing to rinse her plate and mug and place them in the dishwasher. "We'll talk more once you two get," she made vague hand gestures, "everything out of your system." Glancing to her daughter, she held her hand up, "And I _promise_ not to say anything to anyone until you tell me you can, but I hope it's soon. I can't wait to tell Carla Lombardi that _my_ daughter is dating a doctor while her no-excuse, good for nothing son can't even catch himself someone who knows how to wash her hair on a regular basis." She smiled brightly, clearly thinking about the prospect of that scenario playing out. "I'm going out. Love you both." With a flourish that was uniquely Angela Rizzoli, she kissed them both on the cheek and left out the front door.

"Well, that went well," Jane stated quietly, still slightly dazed.

Maura was well-bred enough to restrain her laughter until Angela had made her grand exit. "I give it no more than twenty-four hours until she's realized that she can now command two wombs to produce her grandchildren instead of one."

"Three hours, tops. I'm betting a text message to both of us, and an email with helpful links on where we can and what we can do to make that happen as quickly as possible." Jane sighed. "Ready to go back to bed?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading. We appreciate your reviews.<strong>


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